African American Grief potx

Shneidman Lester—Katie’s Diary: Unlocking the Mystery of a Suicide Martin, Doka—Men Don’t Cry…Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief Nord—Multiple AIDS-Related Loss: A Handbo

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African American Grief

The Series in Death, Dying, and Bereavement

Consulting Editor

Robert A Neimeyer

Beder—Voices of Bereavement: A Casebook for Grief Counselors

Davies—Shadows in the Sun: The Experiences of Sibling Bereavement in Childhood

Harvey—Perspectives on Loss: A Sourcebook

Klass—The Spiritual Lives of Bereaved Parents

Jeffreys—Helping Grieving People – When Tears Are Not Enough: A Handbook for Care Providers

Leenaars—Lives and Deaths: Selections from the Works of Edwin S Shneidman

Lester—Katie’s Diary: Unlocking the Mystery of a Suicide

Martin, Doka—Men Don’t Cry…Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief

Nord—Multiple AIDS-Related Loss: A Handbook for Understanding and Surviving a Perpetual Fall

Roos—Chronic Sorrow: A Living Loss

Rosenblatt—Parent Grief: Narratives of Loss and Relationship

Rosenblatt & Wallace—African American Grief

Tedeschi & Calhoun—Helping Bereaved Parents: A Clinician’s Guide

Silverman—Widow to Widow, Second Edition

Werth—Contemporary Perspectives on Rational Suicide

FORMERLY THE SERIES IN DEATH EDUCATION, AGING, AND HEALTH CARE

HANNELORE WASS, CONSULTING EDITOR

Bard—Medical Ethics in Practice

Benoliel—Death Education for the Health Professional

Bertman—Facing Death: Images, Insights, and Interventions

Brammer—How to Cope with Life Transitions: The Challenge of Personal Change

Cleiren—Bereavement and Adaptation: A Comparative Study of the Aftermath of Death

Corless, Pittman-Lindeman—AIDS: Principles, Practices, and Politics, Abridged Edition

Corless, Pittman-Lindeman—AIDS: Principles, Practices, and Politics, Reference Edition

Curran—Adolescent Suicidal Behavior

Davidson—The Hospice: Development and Administration Second Edition

Davidson, Linnolla—Risk Factors in Youth Suicide

Degner, Beaton—Life-Death Decisions in Health Care

Doka—AIDS, Fear, and Society: Challenging the Dreaded Disease

Doty—Communication and Assertion Skills for Older Persons

Epting, Neimeyer—Personal Meanings of Death: Applications for Personal Construct Theory to Clinical Practice Haber—Health Care for an Aging Society: Cost-Conscious Community Care and Self-Care Approaches Hughes—Bereavement and Support: Healing in a Group Environment

Irish, Lundquist, Nelsen—Ethnic Variations in Dying, Death, and Grief: Diversity in Universality

Klass, Silverman, Nickman—Continuing Bonds: New Understanding of Grief

Lair—Counseling the Terminally Ill: Sharing the Journey

Leenaars, Maltsberger, Neimeyer—Treatment of Suicidal People

Leenaars, Wenckstern—Suicide Prevention in Schools

Leng—Psychological Care in Old Age

Leviton—Horrendous Death, Health, and Well-Being

Leviton—Horrendous Death and Health: Toward Action

Lindeman, Corby, Downing, Sanborn—Alzheimer’s Day Care: A Basic Guide

Lund—Older Bereaved Spouses: Research with Practical Applications

Neimeyer—Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, and Application

Papadatou, Papadatos—Children and Death

Prunkl, Berry—Death Week: Exploring the Dying Process

Ricker, Myers—Retirement Counseling: A Practical Guide for Action

Samarel—Caring for Life and Death

Sherron, Lumsden—Introduction to Educational Gerontology Third Edition

Stillion—Death and Sexes: An Examination of Differential Longevity Attitudes, Behaviors, and Coping Skills Stillion, McDowell, May—Suicide Across the Life Span—Premature Exits

Vachon—Occupational Stress in the Care of the Critically Ill, the Dying, and the Bereaved

Wass, Corr—Childhood and Death

Wass, Corr—Helping Children Cope with Death: Guidelines and Resource Second Edition

Wass, Corr, Pacholski, Forfar—Death Education II: An Annotated Resource Guide

Wass, Neimeyer—Dying: Facing the Facts Third Edition

Weenolsen—Transcendence of Loss over the Life Span

Werth—Rational Suicide? Implications for Mental Health Professionals

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African American Grief

NEW YORK AND HOVE

Paul C Rosenblatt and Beverly R Wallace

Published in 2005 by Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

270 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

Published in Great Britain by Routledge

Taylor & Francis Group

27 Church Road Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA

© 2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rosenblatt, Paul C

African American grief / Paul C Rosenblatt, Beverly R Wallace.

p ; cm (The series in death, dying, and bereavement) Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-415-95151-8 (hardcover : alk paper) ISBN 0-415-95152-6 (pbk : alk paper)

1 African Americans Mental health 2 African Americans Psychology 3 Grief United States

4 Bereavement United States Psychological aspects 5 Loss (Psychology)

I Wallace, Beverly R., 1954- II Title III Series

[DNLM: 1 Grief 2 African Americans psychology 3 Attitude to Death ethnology

Taylor & Francis Group

is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc.

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CONTENT ONTENT ONTENTS SS S

3 Racism and Discrimination in the Life of the Deceased 19

5 African American Institutions for Dealing with Death 43

13 Continuing Contact with the Deceased 133

14 Talking about It, Crying about It with Others 145

15 Our Grief and Theirs: African Americans

Compare Their Grief with Euro-American Grief 153

16 Understanding African American Grief 167

SERIES EDIT

SERIES EDITOR’S OR’S

FOREW

Racism and Resilience

In its recently completed and comprehensive review of the literature on griefpublished over the last 20 years, the Center for the Advancement of Health(2004) attempted not only to summarize the best of contemporary scholarship

on bereavement, but also to establish the research agenda for the next decade.Significantly, the first of these recommendations was to investigate the relative-

ly neglected topic of diversity as it shapes the human encounter with loss, with aparticular emphasis on such sociodemographic factors as race and ethnicitythat are likely to moderate the impact of bereavement on critical health out-comes ranging from the psychological adjustment of survivors to their basicmortality Indeed, of the over 4,000 studies published since 1984 on psycho-social issues at the end-of-life or during bereavement, only a small handfulattempt to examine the potentially distinctive reactions to looming or actualloss for Americans who are not part of white majority culture The result is aliterature that tells us less than it might about the experience of other culturaland subcultural groups, thereby promoting a “one size fits all” conception ofgrieving of dubious relevance to any given community of bereaved persons,particularly those whose distinctive histories and social conditions departsignificantly from those of the cultural mainstream African Americans areone such cultural group, and redressing the inattention to this importantpopulation is the ambitious goal undertaken by Rosenblatt and Wallace inthis groundbreaking volume

The relatively few reports available that address the grief experiences ofAfrican Americans tend to follow a predictable pattern, taking the form of eitherthoughtful essays based on personal or professional experience, or incidentalreports of racial or ethnic differences in a larger statistical study of types ofloss or comparisons of grief outcomes for various subgroups Building onthis germinal literature, Rosenblatt and Wallace attempt something different:

an in-depth qualitative study of the losses of dozens of African Americans,who generously volunteered hours of their time to discuss their encounterwith the death of a loved one, in all of its psychological, social, and spiritualcomplexity Using grounded theory analyses, the authors then extracted patternsfrom the welter of words, using extensive quotation of the men and womenthemselves to give voice to their unique experiences of loss and bereavement.The richness of the resulting report is hinted at by the sixteen chapters that

comprise this book, focusing on topics ranging from various institutions,practices and beliefs that configure African American mourning to particularsocial processes and conditions that support or complicate grieving.What can the reader expect to learn by immersion in this readable render-ing of African American bereavement? In a phrase, a great deal Concrete fea-tures of communal grieving come to light, from the significance of food madeavailable following a service to the psychological and historical underpinnings

of elaborate funeral ceremonies Likewise, less tangible but no less importantfeatures of mourning and meaning are explored, such as the adaptation ofAfrican customs in the context of predominantly Christian rituals, resulting

in distinctive practices of “praying a loved one into heaven” during

“home-going” celebrations A leitmotif throughout much of the book is the resilience

of the African American community in the face of centuries of racism, whosesubtle and unsubtle influences can be discerned in both the lives and deaths

of family members loved and lost At times, this imparts an element of heroism

to those lives, as stories of success against the odds form a source of pride forsurvivors At other times, the injustice associated with, say, assignment tohazardous work that contributed to the death presents an additional challenge

to the bereaved beyond the sundered attachment itself The evenhandednesswith which Rosenblatt and Wallace treat these themes is noteworthy, as whenthey illustrate the advantages and constraints associated with “being strong

in grief,” particularly for women who are pillars of their families and communities.Nor do they shy away from the hard realities of loss in African Americanfamilies—families often marked by histories of division, conflict, splits, mal-treatment, neglect, poor health, and substance abuse But by situating thesecomplicating factors in a broader cultural context, they both make them intell-igible, and highlight the strength of people who have drawn on a fund ofpersonal and collective resources to accommodate to loss in ways that aresurprisingly resilient

In short, Rosenblatt and Wallace have written a book that holds lessonsfor students and scholars, professionals and lay readers, lessons conveyed inthe words of bereaved African Americans themselves Drawing richly on thepresent day accounts of interviewees, it both illuminates a past experienced

by members of this important cultural group, and offers a future take-offpoint for more sensitive studies of grief among African Americans In short,

by gathering, sifting, and interpreting these accounts, the authors have done

a service for both the women and men who contributed their narratives ofloss, and for those of us who need to be instructed by them

ROBERT A NEIMEYER, PH.D.The University of MemphisOctober, 2004

ACKN KN KNO O OWLEDGMENT WLEDGMENT WLEDGMENTS SS S

For funding that helped to supported the interviewing that underlies thisbook, we are grateful to the Agricultural Experiment Station of the University

of Minnesota For help with some of the transcribing, we thank JessicaPaulson

Paul is grateful for stimulating conversations with Oliver J Williams,Tawana Bandy, Roxanne Cohen Silver, and William Turner For a home envi-ronment that supported the time commitments and involvements that led tothis book, Paul is grateful to Sara Wright and Emily Wright-Rosenblatt.Beverly is grateful to Dr Carolyn McCrary and Dr Ed Wimberly, professors

at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, for teaching herthe art of care; the Emory Center for Pastoral Care, especially Theresa Snorton,Robert Morris, Osofo (Calvin) Banks, Janet Lutz, and Nancy Long, who gaveher the opportunity to walk with those who grieve; and to Jacqui, who taughther about grief and loss on a personal level Beverly is also grateful to JaylenSamuel, William and Yolanda Silveri, her grandson, son, and daughter, whohave endured her many travels, and to Richard Wallace, who supported her

in all of her efforts

We could not have written this book without the assistance of the 26 peoplewho gave the interviews that are at the heart of this book To them we saythank you, thank you

INTRODUCTION ODUCTION

In the thousands of English language articles, essays, and books by researchersand practitioners writing about grief following a death, there is little aboutAfrican American grief (Barrett, 1995) This is not to say that a small number

of studies cannot be immensely important We have benefited from readingthe works that are in the literature and that we cite at a number of places inthis book, for example, Barrett (1995), Brice (1999), Hines (1986, 1991), Kalishand Reynolds (1981), and Meagher and Bell (1993) But still there are so fewworks focused on African Americans that it seems to us that African Ameri-can grief has been neglected to a remarkable extent And the neglect is

compounded in that, judging by what is reported in the Social Science

Cita-tion Index, the little that has been written is rarely cited in the wider grief

literature

Why the neglect of African American grief? One way to think about it isthat many who write about grief may assume that African American grief isnot different from that of Euro-Americans In fact, we believe that the assump-tion is even broader than that It is that grief is a basic human process Sojust as all humans breathe in the same way, all humans grieve in the sameway Thinking along those lines, a person would believe that if we learnabout anybody’s grief we learn about everybody’s grief

It may be convenient to assume that everyone grieves in basically the sameway Then one will know about everyone just by knowing oneself and thefew people one knows well or just by having studied grief in one ethnicgroup One can define grief as though it is the same across all groups Onecan theorize about grief without paying attention to all the ways that lifeexperience, culture, and so on might make differences from one group toanother It certainly is attractive to entertain a simple, generalized view ofgrief But there is no way to know if the assumption of commonality of griefprocesses across human groups is valid without actually having studied grief

in many (most? all?) human groups There is no way to know if AfricanAmerican grief is just like Euro-American grief without having studied it Infact, there is considerable evidence that grief is not the same from one culture

to another (Rosenblatt, 1993, 1997, 2001, 2003; Rosenblatt, Walsh, & son, 1976)

Jack-xii Introduction

One can wonder if theories and knowledge based on an oppressor group

in an oppressive system apply to the people who are oppressed (Plumpp,

1972, ch 8) One can also wonder if white ignorance or neglect of grief orany other aspect of African American life is connected to the larger system ofracism and privilege that is almost impossible to escape in the United States.Most scholars who study grief are, like the first author of this book, white.Just as whites tend to ignore other areas of African American experience(e.g., Davis, 2000; hooks, 1992; Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1998; McIntosh, 1988)they may tend to ignore African American grief Tuning out African Americangrief might occur for many reasons Many white people live racially segregatedlives, so they may have little to go on in thinking about African Americangrieving And also, it may be that in some ways African American experiencedoes not count as much as white experience for some white people Moreover,African American grief may be aversive for some whites to study, becauseunderstanding African American grief could draw whites into understand-ing the pain and the premature deaths caused by white oppression and indif-ference to (or ignorance of) that oppression (By “premature deaths” we meandeaths happening before they would be likely to occur if living conditions forAfrican Americans were the same as they are for Euro-Americans.)

Perhaps these speculations are off base in general or for specific griefscholars, but even if they are, it is clear that there is not a lot written aboutAfrican American grief and not a lot of attention in the scholarly literature toAfrican American grief or even to the possibility that it differs in significantways from white grief and is important to study in itself

The Aims and Limitations of this Book

As a contribution to furthering knowledge about African American griefand filling the gap in the literature, this book offers an analysis of grief asdescribed by 26 African Americans who had experienced the death of some-one important in their lives Although the 26 people whose interviews in-form this book constitute too small and too nonrepresentative a sample toprovide a fully valid and comprehensive picture of African American grief,

we intend for this book to offer an approximation to what will some day bethat comprehensive picture of African American bereavement Based on the

26 interviews, we describe, document, and analyze what seem to us to bekey phenomena in African American grieving and key elements of differ-ence between African American and Euro-American grieving There is muchthat could conceivably be relevant to African American grief that the peoplewho were interviewed did not talk about For example, they had little ornothing to say about slavery or about matters related to health maintenancesuch as diet and exercise Research may someday expose connections ofslavery to contemporary African American bereavement Research may some-

Introduction xiii

day explore how it is that grieving African Americans have so little to sayabout health maintenance activities that might conceivably be related to whodies of what disease when But the present study, relying on the interviews

we were given, remains focused on the domains those interviews opened up.Although in many ways contemporary theories of grief may fit what can

be observed in African American grieving, in some ways these theories aremute, misleading, or unhelpful The standard views of grief do not speak atall to how African American grief might be shaped by and responsive toracism, economic disadvantage, the substantial difference in life expectancybetween African Americans and Euro-Americans, the social class diversity

of many African American families, and, for some African Americans, thepowerful influence of drugs and community devastation Nor do the standardviews of bereavement speak to the possible influence of the African Ameri-can church and African American culture(s) Although a great deal of griefliterature is written as though one set of principles fits all, this book exploresthe ways those principles are and are not all we need to understand the grief

We assumed that African American grief might be like Euro-Americangrief in the core processes of dealing with loss, in grief feelings and theirtime course, the ways that individual grieving affects relationships, the spiritualissues, the ways a grieving person might have a continuing relationship withthe person who died, and the events that set off renewed grieving But wealso assumed that African American grief would be different from Euro-American grief because the history and contemporary experiences of AfricanAmericans provide unique elements for meaning making about the deathand because racism is often implicated in African American death and grief

We assumed that the unique history of oppression would move AfricanAmericans to places that relatively few Euro-Americans are concerning emo-tional control, emotional expression, and perhaps the vital importance ofone or a few close relationships Then too, we assumed that the fact ofdifference in life expectancy would mean that more often for African

xiv Introduction

Americans than for Euro-Americans, losses would be experienced at a tively young age Also, because of how racism and economic oppression haveaffected and continue to affect African Americans, we assumed that propor-tionately more often for African Americans than for Euro-Americans, lossesare occasions for marked difficulties and changes related to scarcity of eco-nomic resources These may include, proportionately more often for AfricanAmericans than for Euro-Americans, having to move to a distant locationfollowing a death, having to assume parental responsibilities for siblings fol-lowing a parent’s death, and having to face long-term severe economic depri-vation as a result of a death

rela-We assumed that many African Americans draw on religious and musicalresources in dealing with a death that are to a degree different from whatmost Euro-Americans draw on Much of it may have its roots in the time ofslavery and in the century and a half of community life since then SomeAfrican Americans talk about drawing on Afrocentric traditions, practices,and meaning systems in dealing with a loss, things that they believe may goback to the time before the Middle Passage Len, for example, is quoted inchapter 15 as talking about:

West African traditions that have been integrated into who we are as African Americans that are unspoken traditions that still happen, that still go on There’s that whole thing about (chuckling), for the brothers who ain’t here, libations and so forth.

It is difficult for an observer to know whether there are historically Africaninfluences in how an individual, family, or community deals with death, but

to the extent that what goes on in contemporary African American life hasroots in Africa (Barrett, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2003), one can turn to the west andcentral Africa of the past for ideas about what to look for in African Ameri-can grief Judging by what has been written about the African roots of mod-ern African American life (e.g., Barrett, 1995, 1998; Devore, 1990; Herskovits,1958; Holloway, 2002; McIlwain, 2003, pp 30–39), one might look for Africaninfluences in what might go on in connection with some, or even many,deaths in the African American community The literature on the culturalroots of African Americans would point to possible African forms, emphases,and meanings in the practice of elaborate funerals, the sense of the importance

of honoring the name of the deceased, emphasis on the crucial importance

of links between mothers and children, the power of the spirit of the deceased,the importance of proper funeral rituals, the ways that losses are communitylosses and not just family losses, and the importance to the community ofdealing properly with the death of a person of great spiritual power Hines(1991) added that important elements of an Afrocentric view of grief includedeath not being an end but a progression to something else, death in old agebeing far superior to an untimely death, death may be willed by the individualwho dies, death that may occur in conjunction with a birth, people who maydelay dying until certain important days (holidays, birthdays), death is God’s

Introduction xv

will, death is not to be feared, and life on earth is preparation for life beyonddeath All this is by way of saying that there is plenty of reason to think thatAfrican American grief might differ from Euro-American grief

The Dilemma of Comparison

In comparing African Americans with Euro-Americans there is the risk ofmaking Euro-Americans the standard to which African Americans cannotmeasure up There is the risk of using Euro-American ways of understandingthings to obscure the uniqueness and complexity of African American ways

of understanding And yet most social science and psychological theory aboutgrief comes from studies of Euro-Americans, so if we are going to make use

of theory in understanding African American grief and use what we learnfrom our interviews of African Americans to challenge that theory, we mustcompare

We want this book to be not only about but for the benefit of AfricanAmericans We want this book to focus on African Americans, rather than todefine African Americans in relationship to Euro-Americans We do not for amoment think that what is meaningful about African Americans is how AfricanAmericans compare with Euro-Americans Still, comparison is useful in rais-ing questions about theories that might be inappropriately applied to AfricanAmericans Comparison is useful in illuminating the ways racism can createchallenges for African Americans that are not present for Euro-Americans.For example, by comparing it is easier to understand how African Americangrieving may be entangled in African Americans relatively often receivingsubstandard medical services (e.g., Christian, Lapane, & Toppa, 2003; Dennis,2001; Freeman & Payne, 2000; Smedley, Stith, & Nelson, 2003) and having ashorter life expectancy than Euro-Americans (e.g., Arias, 2002, 2004).From another angle, comparison seems useful in that African Americansoften compare their experiences with those of Euro-Americans Many of thepeople who were interviewed did not hesitate to contrast African Americanwith Euro-American grief or their experiences with employers, hospitals,and other societal institutions with the experiences of Euro-Americans Thissuggests that in trying to represent African American realities, it is legitimate

to compare African American and Euro-American experience

The bottom line is that we write about African Americans in their ownterms and we also compare African Americans with Euro-Americans where

we think that is appropriate and useful

Knowledge and Generalization

Generalizing from a small sample of people is terribly risky It is especially

so when writing about African Americans, who have been and are the subject

xvi Introduction

of many ignorant and harmful generalizations We do not want to lose track

of the limits of a small sample or of the individuality and diversity of the 36million plus people in the United States who might think of themselves asAfrican American In fact, several of the people interviewed emphasized theindividuality and diversity of African Americans

Kenneth: All human beings need time to make adjustments to the loss of

someone that they love, and I think that what it would be like would be

as unique as each individual family structure and relationship Because Idon’t believe that there’s a monolith of black folk (Chuckling) I thinkthat we all have different traditions and celebrations as to how we cel-ebrate life, as to how we grieve and mourn I think that you go to a

funeral in New Orleans (Beverly: Yeah, they celebrate) You understand? (Beverly: I know) But if you go to one in Bronx, you go to one in Newport

News, Virginia, or to one in Minneapolis or to one in L.A., and Atlanta,you understand? I think that there’re certain things that will be a con-tinuum in that process, but they’re going to be very unique at the sametime Because the culture of black folk has been and is still being deter-mined by many other factors other than their being black So, yeah, Ithink it would look quite different [Note: The names given to each inter-viewee and each person an interviewee mentioned are pseudonyms, but

“Beverly” is the real name of the interviewer, Beverly Wallace.]

Because our sample is small and African Americans are diverse, the edge we offer in this book is not the knowledge of generalizations but ratherthe knowledge of perspectives and ideas that may or may not apply to anyparticular African American We are not saying anything is true in generalfor African Americans, because we do not know and because we are skepticalthat those kinds of generalizations can be meaningful But we offer tentativehypotheses, suggestions, and explanations for what may occur as AfricanAmericans deal with the death of close family members

knowl-The Distinctiveness of African American Life

Every person interviewed for this book was clear that in identity, values, andlife experiences they were African American

Andrew: I can’t be nothing but African American I don’t care how much

that I’m ingrained into a multicultural society, I think, and this is

me that the greatest thing I do have is that I am an African American

An African American even to the point that, yeah, of African descent,but I’m African American I really am

The fact of distinctive identity would be one ingredient in thinking thatperhaps there are clear differences between how African Americans and Euro-Americans grieve

Introduction xvii

Every African American interviewed for this book mentioned tions important in their life that were distinctively African American; forexample, the National Council of Negro Women in the first of the followingthree quotes, the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the second, and theAfrican American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, in the third quote

organiza-Rosalyn: My life now it’s centered around God I work my job here, and I’m

active in my church I’m a church usher And I spend my time with serving

in my ushers’ ministry I work with our junior ushers at our church, andI’m the coordinator, leader for them And I’m also with the United ChurchUshers of Minnesota And I’ve become an instructor So I filled that voidwith things, worthwhile things, what I call worthwhile things That’swhat I like to do Render service to others And (breathes out) work andthen with the National Council of Negro Women

Kenneth: My grandfather’s Baptist too This is my father’s father who was an

AME All right? So on both sides of the family it’s different tradition, butit’s the same faith Same God, all right? (laughs) And so these are thedefining pillars and the shoulders that I stand on in understanding who

I am and how I am in the world

Willa: I buried her in a green dress She was an AKA, so pink and green.

The fact of participation in distinctively African American organizationssuggests that African American emotional life, meaning making, and socialsupport takes place to a substantial extent in a culturally segregated environ-ment The separation of environments is another reason why it is easy for us

to imagine that African American and Euro-American grief would differ insignificant ways

Nowadays for some people, and in the recent past for many who wereinterviewed for this book, the segregation of American society did not stopwith death Cemeteries for African Americans were often (and to some extentstill are) separate (and unequal)

Willa: [My dad] was buried in the quote black cemetery, which means there

was no upkeep or anything Couldn’t even find all the people thatowned property It was some fraternal organization They were scat-tered to the four winds Most of them were dead And if you wantedyour people to be taken care of (chuckling) I can remember manytimes, Mom would load the lawn mower up and her tool kit, and we’d

go to the cemetery and cut Daddy’s plot

The separation of burial places means that African American burial monies and cemetery visits are not necessarily shaped by the constraints andstandards of Euro-American cemeteries True, the influence of Euro-Americans can be seen in African American cemeteries, even in the names

cere-on tombstcere-ones But that does not mean that white people could stop AfricanAmericans from knowing who they are

xviii Introduction

Loretta: I went to our ancestral cemetery and showed my daughter the tombs

from the 1700s And when you can go back three generations and fourgenerations, and say, “Here’s your ancestors, and this is what they wereabout,” and “Here’s our last name, my last name was [misspelled] Theyhad six kids The first three [had a last name spelled like mine] The lastthree were [spelled differently], because the white people said we didn’tknow what we were doin’ when we spelled our name Okay? And thatwas one of my grandfather’s siblings His brother[’s name was spelledlike mine] and [my grandfather’s name was spelled differently] Eventhough they did that to us, we still have that history, and we know who

we are And I know who I am And we’re not weak We are strong.The family life of African Americans, as described by the people we inter-viewed, includes uniquely African American elements For example, childrenare reared in ways that are more characteristic of African American thanEuro-American families

Patricia: My grandmother never had to lift a hand on us You know how

African American women had the effect that just the voice (Beverly ing) and the questions

laugh-Relatively often grandmothers had an important role or the most centralrole in raising the people we interviewed

And the relationship of the family to those outside the family was shaped

by standards that were understood as different from the standards for Americans That, too, may affect the ways people grieve For example:

Euro-Gwen: In my culture you keep your business to yourself.

In explaining their reactions to loss and the reactions of other AfricanAmericans, some respondents framed things partly in terms of the effects ofslavery on African American culture and psychology

Kenneth: There’s a process of conditioning, and people go through it when

they live under adverse conditions And I think that the institution ofslavery that did so much to tear apart families did something to have

us make adjustments in how we deal with the separation fromothers Being taken away and brought to a different land, underdifferent circumstances and conditions, and being conditioned to live atthe edges and the fringes of society, and having to survive does some-thing in conditioning your psyche to deal with folk leaving In orderfor people to survive under these circumstances they must do somemighty psychological gymnastics to keep things intact When you haveyour child sold to someone else, or when you have your husband soldsomewhere else, you understand what I’m saying? And so this wholeprocess, and still having to maintain and do what you’re supposed to

do

Introduction xix

And so in understanding techniques of survival and grieving A few framedthings partly in terms of the carryover of West African traditions

Clyde: I’ve been to some West African funerals, and it’s a lot of similarities

with us, a lot more so than I ever wanted to believe, that all this time,you know, I’m thinking I’m so Americanized It was like similar to

the funerals that I’ve been to as a child growing up (Beverly: Expressions)

Expression, everything The tone was a little different, but the emotionand the exhibition, as I called it before, all that There are peoplespeaking in tongues and the whole nine yards It was almost like a revival

I mean, it was a revival In a lot of ways that’s what it was, a revival But

it was a grieving revival

Len: And then [one] of the neighbors came over and he just wanted to

sing The Lord put it on his heart just to sing Beautiful voice So

he sung for about two and a half to three hours, just singing the songsthat came to his mind And traditionally, I think, it’s a custom for us tosing, you know, the voice, the old saying, “you sang somebody through,”

“singing through.” Just like praying through, you sang them through, Iguess, the old tradition It’s an old African American tradition Well

I should say, it’s probably regional As a person dies you sing theirspirit through And so he was there, and he did

The Importance of Researching

African American Grief

African Americans need to be understood in their own terms, not ignored,not assumed to be just like Euro-Americans The death of someone important

to one can be a devastating experience Grief for a major loss can affectevery aspect of one’s life and can last a lifetime For counselors, therapists,psychologists, clergy, nurses, funeral directors, and other professionals whomay be called on to help grieving African Americans, having a literature toturn to on African American grief may be enormously helpful

At another level, we think one way to enrich the understanding of thing important in human life is to study it from the perspective of diversity.Everyone gains when we learn about the grief experiences of people in agroup that has been neglected The gains include increased understanding

any-of the limits any-of theory, the importance any-of culture and context, and the influence

of intergroup dynamics

At another level, it is time for the social sciences to be for everyone, notfor only certain people We are not in the vanguard in studying AfricanAmerican experience There are large and growing literatures about AfricanAmericans in a number of areas, but grief is one of those areas where there

xx Introduction

is still much to be learned about African American experience We believeone of the great values of this book is that it gives voice to African Americansaddressing a centrally important area of their lives

Narrative and Meaning-Making in Grief

Grieving people often develop narratives about the person who died, thedying, the death, and the aftermath of the death For many people, griefinvolves constructing and voicing narratives (Gilbert, 2002; Harvey, 1996;Riches & Dawson, 1996a, 1996b)

“Narrative” can be defined as a spoken or written connected description of a succession of events or experiences that includes a sense of something to be explained or of moving toward an end-state, markers of story beginning and of ending (or of reaching the present), coherence, characters, and settings (Rosenblatt, 2000a, p 1)

A narrative is a story, whether it comes out as a continuous flow or isvoiced a bit at a time The narrative of a grieving person develops over theyears following the loss The narrative gives meaning to the person who died,the dying, the death, the grieving, the family aftermath of the death, andmuch else connected to the death Our intent in this study was for the inter-views to tap into narratives, and we think they did So what we offer in thisbook is not only people’s records of the “facts,” but their stories thatcontextualize and give meaning to their facts

For grieving African Americans, narrative is often about the larger societalcontext for the loss and the grieving For people who have been denied avoice in the larger society, denied their own voice, and denied the voices ofother African Americans dealing with similar circumstances, there can begratitude that someone is asking about their narratives There is a sense thatgrief is at times not only about the specific loss but about slavery and aboutother forms of oppression that followed slavery and that, in many cases,have continued up into the present Grieving is also about the collective lossfrom the ongoing oppression, and it is also about terrible things that havehappened in the African American community as people try to cope withtheir many losses or, in a sense, give up on trying to cope The followingspeaks to those broader issues and offers blessings for this study in ways thatpossibly one might never hear from a grieving Euro-American

Toni: We got to reclaim our humanity That’s probably what racism has done.

Human beings cry at deaths We cry We take time to remember Wedon’t have to suppress those memories So that’s part of what I think weneed to redo in our community [I am] so happy that you’re doingthis work It’s important work It’s important for the life of our commu-nity as African Americans We’ve got to reclaim our grief, and we’ve got

Introduction xxi

to insist on it Not only reclaiming, but we’ve got to insist this is a valuablelegacy for us And we’ve got to give ourselves permission to grieve beingenslaved That’s gonna set us free I think that’s part of the reasons whyreparations are so important too, is that they associated with our griefsystems And we also have to teach our young people how to grieve,

‘cause so much of the addictions that we see are an attempt to repressgrief It’s all bottled into that, so we won’t get free until we revisit andreclaim our right to grieve It is part of our humanity Our teaching

of our boys not to grieve, not to cry, that is demonic It is vital, it isvital, I mean it’s like for me on a list of one of the 10 things that blackfolk need to do to be free, it would either be one or two It is that impera-tive And we’ve got to grieve both individually and collectively It can’t

be one or the other It’s got to be both/and One of the things that I lovedabout [name of church] when we grew up around there is that I couldcome to [that church] and cry, and the ushers would let me They’d give

me a Kleenex, and they’d let me sit there all day and cry Ourchurches have to be a place that invites grief and gives people, that’s,we’ve got to recapture our wholeness Thank you for doing this.Beverly, God’s blessings on your work Thank you, thank you, thankyou And I’m just gonna pray, I’m gonna keep it in prayer because I’mgonna pray that you do turn it in a book, that you lecture, that you teach,that you do grief workshops, that you lay on hand Whatever it takesand whatever we can do to help you we will do it, ‘cause you are a vitalpiece of what’s gonna help us to be whole and human again

To be open to narratives like those this interviewee and the others couldprovide, Wallace had to ask questions that encouraged stories and had to be

a good narratives listener Being a good narratives listener means hearingthe stories out, being alive to the narratives, not interrupting, but encouragingcontinuation of the narrative It means asking follow-up questions Wallacecarried out what might be called “active” interviewing (Holstein & Gubrium,1995) in that she worked at activating “narrative production.” She encouragedinterviewees with her interest, attentiveness, questions, encouragement toaddress matters from varying viewpoints and the ways she built throughoutthe interview on what the person had told her so far

The Research Process

This study is based on interviews with 26 African American adults who wereresidents of either a Midwestern metropolitan area of the United States orone in the Southeast The knowledge we offer arises from what these peoplehad to say, which was about their own experiences, observations, learning,thought, beliefs, speculation, and family life

xxii Introduction

Recruiting People to Interview

Interviewees were recruited through announcements in newspapers and on

a radio station serving the African American community, through ments on bulletin boards in churches serving the African American commu-nity, and through word of mouth We interviewed everyone who made contactwith us and with whom an interview could be worked out With this ap-proach to recruiting, we have no way of knowing how many people heard orread the announcement of the study and decided not to participate We arenot in a position to say how many people or what sorts of people learnedabout the study but decided not to participate But obviously the small samplehas geographical and other limitations that reduce its generalizability to thevast and diverse African American population

announce-The Interviewer

The interviewer was Beverly Wallace, the second author of this book Wallace

is African American At the time of the interviews she was a doctoral student

in Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota, a Lutheran pastor,

an experienced hospital chaplain, with a bachelor’s degree in social work, amaster’s degree in child development and family relations that included ex-tensive counseling training, and a master’s degree in theology She was also

an experienced research interviewer

We think an African American interviewer was crucial to recruiting people

to interview, gaining rapport, eliciting stories, asking insightful follow-upquestions, and, in the end, interpreting what people had to say There aresome matters, such as issues of racism that some interviewees said they wouldhave been reluctant to voice to a white interviewer

The Interview

The intensive qualitative interviews averaged slightly less than two hours.Interviews were usually carried out in the interviewee’s home or office, oroccasionally in a different location, chosen by the interviewee, that allowedreasonable auditory privacy However, several people chose to be interviewedwithin earshot of a family member

We asked each person who was interviewed to focus on one death, thoughthree talked about two deaths, and one talked about three The interviewswere structured to some extent by an interview guide (see Appendix) thatincluded questions about the interviewee, the interviewee’s family, and theperson who died It asked for the interviewee’s story of the death and in-cluded questions about the life of the person who died There were many

Introduction xxiii

questions about grief experiences—including feelings and their time course,how the death affected relationships with others, how the interviewee hadcome to think about and make sense of the death, continuing relationshipswith the deceased, the connection of the focal loss to other losses, and spiri-tual and religious matters There was a set of questions dealing with how theloss impacted family relationships, and how others in the family dealt withand made sense of the death There were also several questions about what,

if anything, might be unique about African American grief All told, therewere about 100 questions in the interview guide But the interviews wereonly semistructured Interviewees were encouraged to tell their stories asthey chose, and the interviewer went with their stories Eventually, in mostinterviews most questions that were relevant to the interviewee’s life andloss were answered, but not necessarily with direct questions from the inter-viewer and never in the order laid out in the interview guide Also, on manytopics that came up, as the interviewees told their stories and brought uptheir issues, additional questions were asked to clarify things, to draw moreout about the story, to provide a respectful and supportive listening, and tofollow possible hunches about what had been going on in the situation beingdescribed

The interviews seem to have tapped validly into interviewee experiencesand feelings in that interviewees would speak at length and with intensityabout their experiences and feelings All offered substantial narratives It isnot as though they were fishing to give brief answers or to provide answers

in which they were not confident What they had to say was richly accessible

to them And each seemed to work hard to give honest, detailed, and accurateanswers to the questions On the other hand, the interviewees were gener-ally talking about things that happened years ago, and they were only beinginterviewed at one point in time, in one context, by one interviewer So it ispossible that there is a lot they could have said were the situation, the time,

or the interviewer different Still, it seemed from how well developed thenarratives were that most people had thought a lot about the issues theyaddressed There is a validity in researching matters so significant in people’slives that they have thought about matters a great deal That gives morestability, depth, and connectedness to what people have to say They alreadyknew most of it before the interviewer arrived, and what they knew was tooimportant and too tightly linked to too much else to be easily changed by aninterview

Who Was Interviewed

Nineteen women and seven men were interviewed One man and woman, amarried couple, were interviewed together Twelve of the 26 spent their earlyyears in southern or “border” states or in the District of Columbia

step-or deaths fstep-or each.

Analyzing the Data

Audiotapes of the interviews were transcribed verbatim, which means everyword, every sound, everything audible—laughter, throat clearing, pauses, re-starts, slurs, whispers

Rosenblatt transcribed most interviews and thoroughly checked the fewtranscriptions made by someone else In a sense, the data analysis was wellalong during the transcription phase, because it became clear during thetranscribing that a narrative analysis that focused on racism, African Ameri-can culture, and the grief process would capture a lot of what was central towhat people said After the transcriptions were complete, we separately codedseveral transcriptions in detail and discussed our coding, while not forgettingall the other interviews, because Wallace had carried out every interviewand Rosenblatt had transcribed or thoroughly checked the transcription ofevery interview We found we were in good agreement on the initial coding,and so we worked up a tentative book outline that would also be a tentativeguide to coding Then Rosenblatt coded all transcriptions with that outline inmind, generating chapters and chapter sections Wallace checked Rosenblatt’swork by reading the drafts of chapters and challenging coding that seemedinappropriate Where there have been disagreements or differences of opinionabout coding, we have talked things over If we did not agree or if it was notclear that we agreed, we dropped the relevant material We went throughseveral cycles of coding, writing, challenging, and rewriting before we arrived

at the book you hold in your hands

We have tried to write in a way that enables readers to check coding ity At most places where we make assertions, we provide illustrative quotes—typically what we think are the best quotes we have on the point being made.The quotes enable the reader to decide whether our assertions have support

valid-in the valid-interview data We do not provide all the relevant quotes for an tion, but the reader can still see whether a quote that we thought was a goodillustration of the assertion fits the assertion

asser-Introduction xxv

Interview Quotes

All the verbal complexity of the transcripts was used in coding and makingsense of the interviews But in quoting people we have omitted most uh’s,er’s, and other nonlexical sounds, restarts, many instances of words and

phrases like okay, you know, I mean, like, whatever, and so on We have deleted

quite a few repetitions of the same word, phrase, or sentences But we havealso kept some repetitions, because for many people who were interviewedrepetition seemed to be part of the message That is, in repeating they wereemphasizing, focusing the listener, making a statement about the importance

of what they were repeating (see Snead, 1990, for a view of the importanceand place of repetition in African American oral expression) We also haveedited many quotes to make the point we are making clearer, to simplify, and

to make this a book of manageable length for readers The places in quoteswhere we have edited out material are indicated by ellipsis dots ( )

“African American” versus “Black”:

A Note on Terminology

Everyone interviewed for this study was African American Some of thesources we cite and some of the people who were interviewed use the term

black, rather than the term African American In quoting those sources, we

maintain their usage, but in textual material that is original with us we draw

a distinction between “African American” and “black.” We use the term African

American to refer to people who have grown up in the United States, who

have African ancestors, and who identify themselves as part of a communitythat is distinctively rooted in the culture of people of African descent who

have lived in the United States for many generations We use the term black

to refer to all people who have African ancestors, including those who arefrom the Caribbean and from West Africa and have cultural roots in thoseregions

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Grief and Life Span

African American grief occurs in the context of a substantially shorter lifeexpectancy than is true for whites (Barrett, 1997, 1998; Freeman & Payne,2000; Lamb, 2003; Meagher & Bell, 1993; Moore & Bryant, 2003) In recentmortality data (Arias, 2002, 2004; Levine et al., 2001), African Americansaveraged a 5.6-year shorter life expectancy at birth than whites, with the differ-ence greater for men (6.4 years) than for women (4.7 years) Although sincethe late 1990s, the disparity between African Americans and EuropeanAmericans in life expectancy has decreased somewhat, the long-term trendhas been toward increasing disparity (Levine et al., 2001) African Americansexperience pregnancy and infant loss at double the rate experienced by whites(Guyer, Freedman, Strobino, & Sondik, 2000; Hillemeier, Geronimus, &Bound, 2001; Papacek,Collins, Schulte, Goergen, & Drolet, 2002; Van, 2001),and African American women are several times more likely to die in childbirththan are Euro-American women (U.S Centers for Disease Control, 1995) AsBarrett (1997, 1998) and others (e.g., Krakauer, Crenner, & Fox, 2002; Krieger,2003) have observed, the differences in life expectancy are to a substantialextent about things that racism does Racism leads directly or indirectly togreater poverty, a less healthful environment, poorer health, fewer physicianvisits, poorer pregnancy care, poorer nutrition, and poorer access to healthcare Presumably racism is also the key to understanding why AfricanAmericans are more likely to lack health insurance than are whites (22.2% vs.15% for whites—U.S Bureau of the Census, 1999)

2 African American Grief

Early Loss of Parent

The shorter life expectancy for African Americans means that proportionatelymore African Americans than Euro-Americans will not be adults when a parentdies If there is a surviving parent or grandparent who is taking care of thenewly grieving young person, that adult is also likely to be grieving intensely

We know from studies of Euro-Americans that grieving parents are often attentive, neglectful, and emotionally unavailable to surviving children forquite a while following the death of a child (Rosenblatt, 2000a)

in-Among the people we interviewed, in some cases the early loss of a parentmeant that a person had no parent left who was able and willing to providecare The result was, that as teenagers or preteens, some of the people whowere interviewed experienced not only the devastating death of a parent butalso the devastating loss of a surviving parental figure’s nurturance Barbarawas one of several people who, while still a minor, had to move to a distanthousehold to receive adequate nurturing

Barbara: I am 56 years old .

Beverly: What brought you here to this part of the coutnry?

Barbara: The death of my mother .

Beverly: How old were you at the time?

Barbara: Mama was buried on my 17th birthday, exactly.

Several interviewees had personal experience or stories of other familymembers taking on parenting responsibilities for young children when themother of those children had died at a comparatively young age

Franklin: [My sister] was in her early 30s [when she was killed] She had three

children The youngest was only four months old My sister whosurvived is another one of strength (crying) She took those children(pause) She raised them Along with her own two, with all five of thosekids she took ‘em, and their father didn’t give them not one solitarydime She raised them And they’re all grown [My] oldest sister

is the one who was killed The middle [sister], she’s the one who did therearing

Among many possible consequences of losing parents when one is young,

is that such a loss might make it less likely that one will know well how toparent one’s own children One will not have had the experience of observingone’s parent do what parents do That can add an element of grieving to one’sown parenting

Charlotte: It impacted every step of my life When I recognized that I had

that missing in my mothering, parenting, I was parenting my teenage

Grief and Life Span 3

daughter I remember saying to her , “This is the best I can be.”But just as I said that to her, I remember thinking, “I didn’t even have amother as a teenager,” so I didn’t have it to go on

Early loss of a parent also means that one will have fewer memories of howparents deal with the challenges in life And relatively early in life one nolonger can turn to memories of how parents dealt with the milestones of life.For example, not having a parent who went through menopause or who livedlong enough to retire, one will not have parental models of how to deal withmenopause or retirement

The fact that there are so many deaths of parents at an early age in theAfrican American community can make it seem to an African American to bequite a blessing for a parent to survive well into a son or daughter’s adulthood

Calvin: Our family has been blessed [When] my mother died, I was 36 years

old I was grown Grown And that’s just not true about a lot of families,that that chain is not broken for that many years And so We’ve beenblessed We’ve been blessed Really We really don’t have a complaintwhen we look at the big picture

Early Loss of Spouse

In data from 1940, 1950, and 1960, Lopata (1973, pp 22–23) showed that atleast for ages beginning at 45 or 50, African American women were morelikely to be widowed than white women The differences were especially great

at the early ages, when a substantial difference in life expectancy might show

up most clearly In more recent years, the census data continue to show stantial racial differences in widowhood For example, according to U.S Bureau

sub-of the Census (1990) statistics (cited in Hobbs & Danon, 1993), among peopleage 65 or older, 55.5% of black women were widowed, versus 46.7% of whitewomen, and 23.3% of black men were widowed versus 13.2% of white men.Although some have argued that at advanced ages, African American life ex-pectancy is greater than Euro-American life expectancy, the evidence nowseems to be that the earlier research finding was an artifact of erroneous agedata for elderly African Americans (Preston, Elo, Rosenwaike, & Hill, 1996;Shrestha, 1997) The current view in the demographic literature seems to bethat the life expectancy of African Americans at any age is less than it is forwhites, so at any age a married African American is more likely to becomewidowed than a married person who is white Among many consequences ofthe early death of a spouse is that one may find oneself as the sole parent at arelatively early age

Elsa: [My son’s] dad died when he was 6 He was killed in a motorcycle

accident

4 African American Grief

If parenting a child one has shared in raising since birth can be difficultwhen one becomes widowed, the problems may even be greater when it is astepchild that one must raise The problems may not only be with the childbut also with the deceased spouse’s family of origin, who may want the child

to live with somebody in their family When Len’s wife Camille died, therewere difficulties with her family of origin about where Len’s 15-year-old step-daughter, Janet, should live

Len: Camille’s family initially had a question about what would happen to

Janet And so there was some tension that Janet was supposed to comelive with one of them Because of me; I’m a stepdad I’m not a biologicalfather And so there was just that uneasiness, but it got resolved veryquickly, because Camille had made it very clear that Janet was gonnastay with me And so once the family really knew that and it was commu-nicated clearly, then there was no more pressure there

Early Loss of Sibling

Given the shorter life expectancy of African Americans (Arias, 2002, 2004;Levine et al., 2001), we can infer that sibling losses, are, on average, experi-enced at a relatively young age by African Americans

Franklin: My sister was killed in a car accident along with my fiancée and her

mother [My sister] was in her 30s, early 30s

Among the interviewees, some sibling deaths were attributed to the use ofalcohol or other chemicals In any group of Americans, some people die pre-maturely from using alcohol and other chemicals African Americans maydisproportionately experience such deaths, presumably in part because someare strongly motivated to numb the pain and frustration of racism, the blocks

to opportunity, the economic marginalization, and the daily insults of racism.For example, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alco-holism (2003), the death rate for cirrhosis of the liver is higher for AfricanAmericans than for Euro-Americans, with the difference being especially greatfor men Barbara talked about her brother’s death at an early age from anoverdose of alcohol

Barbara: In between Mama and Daddy, the knee baby Pierre, the wild child,

passed And he didn’t just pass He went home one weekend He wasliving in New York by this time, him and his family But he came homefor the weekend When you come home for the weekend, the cousins gettogether And basically he had an overdose of alcohol, at 33

Sibling deaths at a young age may, like parental deaths at a young age, beespecially challenging The first death one experiences of somebody important

Grief and Life Span 5

in one’s life is often unusually difficult (Rosenblatt, 1983, p 158) And thefirst death may be even more difficult if one is relatively young One lacks thelife experience, maturity, social supports, knowledge, economic, and otherresources to deal with the death as well as one might The experience of asibling death, that is one’s first death of someone close, and that is experienced

at a relatively young age, can be especially devastating And a grieving parentmay not be much help in that situation

Evelyn: My sister older than I passed on, and this was something that I couldn’t

understand I couldn’t handle this I just couldn’t understand it, and itreally, really clouded my thinking I couldn’t think; I couldn’t do nothing,and it just, this girl we were very close, but she was, let’s see, a year olderthan I was And she died all of a sudden And I just couldn’t understandthis, and then I was just telling myself, “God, why couldn’t it have been

me instead of her? Why, why, why?” And I just couldn’t understand that,and I went on day by day and I was just in a daze I just couldn’t think Icouldn’t do nothing, and so gradually just started easing up, easing up,and I would go and I would try to understand I would try to talk to

my mother, and she didn’t understand how to talk to the children likethey do today or get you some help or something And I just drifted alongand tried to understand, but it was very, very difficult for me

Beverly: How old were you?

Evelyn: I was 16.

Death of Child

African American children are much more likely that Euro-American children

to die at birth or soon after (Guyer et al., 2000; Hillemeier, Geronimus, &Bound, 2001; Papacek et al., 2002; Van, 2001), and such losses are reflected inour data Several parents talked about their continuing struggles, many yearslater, to deal with an infant or child’s death For Maya, for example, the still-born death of a son, who she never saw, continued to hurt many years later

Beverly: Did you ever see the baby?

Maya: Nope, they had already disposed of him Did away with him I don’t

know what they did to him, or even how they disposed of him, and thatbothered me Every year [on his birthday] I go through a depression,and no matter how I try to fight it off or pray it off, it’s always there And,

I don’t know, for a long time I blamed God, and I didn’t realize that I wasblaming Him I think his birthday is the hardest for me, and I don’tknow if I’ll ever, I might never get to the point where there’s a completehealing of my desire to have him with me

6 African American Grief

Conclusion

The African American interviewees in this study, like African Americans ingeneral, were relatively likely to experience major deaths at an early age–thedeath of parent, spouse, sibling, or child We cannot say that these prematuredeaths produced qualitatively different grief than what might be observed inEuro-Americans experiencing losses of similarly close family members at simi-larly early ages But we can say that experiencing premature deaths meansthat African Americans relatively often experience the additional challenges

of grieving that come with early bereavement These include, for loss of aparent, being moved elsewhere to be parented, or being parented by someonewho is grieving intensely For loss of a spouse, the additional challenges includethe likelihood of taking over single parenting of a child or stepchild at a timewhen one is grieving All early losses can include the additional challenges ofgrieving a first death of someone important to one at a relatively young age.Among other things, early losses may involve grieving when one is rathershort on experiential, cognitive, emotional, financial, social, spiritual, andother resources for dealing with a loss, understanding one’s own grief andthe grief of others, facing the mortality of loved ones, and facing personalmortality

For an African American who is aware of the shorter life expectancy, theremay be a heavy burden of anger and resentment entangled in grief Almostany death may seem to be an injustice, and not only a cause for grief but also

a continuing, painful reminder of how much racism has disadvantaged thedeceased, oneself, and all African Americans Hence, if one’s brother or hus-band died at 50, one’s grief can be complicated by anger, resentment, an-guish, and other feelings that might arise from realizing that if he had beenwhite the expectation would be that he would have had four more years oflife If one’s mother or wife dies at 65, one’s grief can be complicated by feelingsthat arise from realizing that if she had been white the probability would havebeen that she would have had almost two more years of life (U.S Bureau ofthe Census, 2002, Table 97) A critic (possibly white) might say that differ-ences in life expectancy are unimportant in a practical sense when consideringhow long a middle-aged or elderly person lives, but many people seek advancedmedical help and go to great effort and expense to keep a loved one alive andwell for a matter of days, weeks, and months, let alone the substantial number

of years between the life expectancy for African Americans and the life pectancy for Euro-Americans

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Racism as a Cause of Death

Judging by what interviewees had to say, in order to understand AfricanAmerican grief it is important to understand how an African American deathmay have been caused in whole or in part by racism Many deaths in theUnited States are premature in the sense that they occur at a time prior towhat is the average for the general population Premature death can happen

to anybody, regardless of race or ethnicity But, as was indicated in chapter 1,premature death happens relatively often to African Americans Why do thesepremature deaths occur? There are, we think, myriad reasons, many of whichhave to do with the direct or indirect effects of racism

Direct experiences of racism and such indirect effects of racism as housingdeficiencies, lack of jobs, and poverty may so stress the cardiovascular system,the immune system, and other bodily systems as to jeopardize health (Clark,Anderson, Clark, & Williams, 1999; Din-Dzietham, Nembhard, Collins, &Davis, 2004; Ellison et al., 2001; Steffen, McNeilly, Anderson, & Sherwood,2003; Williams, 1999) Racism in health care may mean that African Americansare given less than the best and most prompt treatment This is true, forexample, in the case of breast cancer (Mandelblatt et al., 2002), cardiovasculardisease (Ofili, 2001), and prenatal care (Sims & Rainge, 2002) Toxic wastedumps and chemical plants that emit hazardous chemicals into the air andthe water table are located in places where a relatively high percentage of thepeople living in the nearby danger zone are African American (Bullard, 1990;Bullard & Wright, 1989–1990; Dorsey, 1998; Pine, Marx, & Lakshmanan,2002; Rosen, 1994) Unemployment, underemployment, and employment in

8 African American Grief

economically marginal jobs are part of why African Americans are less likely

to have health insurance (U.S Bureau of the Census, 1999) and that may beone reason why African Americans are less likely to receive early treatmentfor diseases that become life threatening when treatment is delayed (e.g.,prostate cancer; Horner, 1998) Residential segregation by race is an importantfactor underlying racial differences in socioeconomic status, because highersocioeconomic status provides an important foundation of resources for goodhealth (Cooper, 2001; Williams & Collins, 2001) A continuing pattern ofeconomic discrimination pushes African Americans toward more dangerousjobs and work environments and less safe homes and communities Racismcan also operate quite directly to produce premature death For example, aswill be laid out in narratives presented in this chapter, because someone isAfrican American, he or she may be channeled into a dangerous job or bedenied access to the best available medical care by people acting in a racistfashion

When economic discrimination or direct racism seems to a grieving AfricanAmerican to be partly or fully responsible for a death, it may add elements ofanger, rage, and indignation to the grief It may draw on the feelings andmemories associated with other deaths the person has experienced personally

or has heard about from others, that seem to have been caused, in whole or

in part, by discrimination and racism It may draw on the feelings and ries associated with personal experiences of discrimination and racism thatwere not fatal but still stung and harmed It can add feelings of hopelessness,vengefulness, inadequacy, and desperation that can come up at anytime anAfrican American faces, remembers, or thinks about discrimination or racism.There are also matters of meaning making People make meanings about

memo-a dememo-ath memo-as memo-a pmemo-art of the grief process In mmemo-aking mememo-aning, they come to memo-astory about the person who died, what happened that brought about thedeath, and what feelings are appropriate As they develop their narrative,they frame things in terms that make sense to them, drawing on religious,medical, psychological, and other cultural bases of meaning With deathsseemingly caused in part or entirely by discrimination or racism, there is thetemplate of stories of discrimination and racism, drawn from experience andAfrican American culture that can provide part of the meaning and storypattern for a death

We cannot say that things for African Americans are entirely differentfrom the way they are for Euro-Americans, because Euro-Americans certainlyhave stories of preventable, avoidable deaths, and the feelings that go alongwith those stories They even have their stories of deaths caused by someoneelse’s malevolence But they would not be likely to have stories and mean-ings coming from centuries of being victimized by racism and from ongoingpersonal, familial, and community experiences of discrimination and racism

Racism as a Cause of Death 9

Death by Racist Assignment of Hazardous Work

Some African American deaths are understood to have been caused by racistassignment of hazardous work Franklin, who at the time of the interviewwas 58 and whose stepfather had been in the military during the VietnamWar, thought his stepfather, who had died about a year prior to the interview,died from an illness contracted as a result of a racist assignment in the militarythat involved exposure to cancer-causing chemicals With a death that didnot have to happen when it did and in the way it did, the pain of grief wasvery intense and included feelings of anger and rage

Franklin: He had had a confrontation with his commanding officer

(cr ying) The guy made these comments [My stepfather]then asked him, “Sir, may I have permission to speak man-to-man?”Which is that military request for, “Let’s forget about rank now We cantake these chevrons off my sleeves, and we can take that bird offyour shoulder,” because it was a full bird colonel “And I’ll tell you aboutblack folks, and what you’re calling ‘spooks’” and some of those otherterms that they use, which I’m still not going to use, the ‘n’ word .The commander did give him permission to speak He said, “We can gooutside and I’ll whoop your (laughing) ass right now.” Which, ofcourse, the colonel did not do And he was calling to tell me that he hadhad this confrontation “I told that (chuckling) so-and-so that, too AndI’m serious .” The Vietnam conflict was on at this time He al-ready served a tour of duty there When he told me on the phone, Isaid, “Dad, I wish you hadn’t done that .” Because here’s a dude whocould control your life They’ll send you right back to Vietnam I didn’tknow how prophetic that that was He called me back less than twoweeks later to say, “Son, you’re right I got my orders .” He did goback to Nam

Beverly: You talked earlier about his illness and the relationship of this

ill-ness and his death and the military Would you say that racism affected

or caused or had an impact on his death?

Franklin: (chuckling) An explicit statement? Of course There’s absolutely

no, no way not to say that racism played this role This man wound up

twice having to deal with Agent Orange They were the ones who wereloading it He was in the group that was loading Agent Orange Onetime they got sprayed How is this not, when you know all of thefolks, or the vast majority of the people who have to deal with this war,[were] black folk Who were the ones that were so much in the filling up

the body bags in outrageous numbers? Black folk Who were the ones

who had all of this hazardous duty crap ? It was black folk Who was

10 African American Grief

he commanding? A whole black group (laughs) I think he had two whiteboys in the outfit under him in Nam Ah! (crying) A rage is what Ifeel (laughs)

Beverly: Why a rage?

Franklin: (pause) This is racism, and racism is racism.

Death by Medical Racism

It is no secret that racism is a big barrier to African Americans getting equate health care in the United States (Barrett, 2003; Feagin & McKinney,

ad-2003, pp 184–194; Freeman & Payne, 2000; Smedley, Stith, & Nelson, 2003)

Kenneth: believe that institutional racism has many effects, and the most

direct would be health, health care, and access to that health care There’s

an article in Jet magazine that shows that African Americans who are in

Veterans Administration hospitals outlive whites, because they have cess to health care So I think that institutionalized racism plays arole in that respect, by denying health care and quality health care services

ac-to the folk

Approximately 40% of the people who were interviewed talked of a deaththat they felt resulted at least in part from medical racism In these cases, themeaning making of the grief process of necessity includes making meaningsconcerning medical racism And feelings of pain, anger, and rage can easilycome to the fore as one thinks about the racism, feels that both oneself andthe person one is grieving for were helpless to counteract it, thinks aboutother instances of racism, and feels the injustice of the death

One version of medical racism that people talked about was the denial ofservices The hospital would not treat someone African American; the ambu-lance would not come to pick up someone African American Some of theexamples people gave were from decades ago; some were more recent Asthe literature cited earlier in this chapter indicates, medical racism is notonly a thing of the past

Franklin: The racism that was in play in my sister’s death because across

the bridge, where their car had the accident, they had to take her 22

miles away to a hospital that took black folks, because the one on this

side of the bridge in the town in which we lived didn’t take [us], whichwas only seven miles away

Beverly: Do you think racism or discrimination was in any way connected to

[your son’s] death?

Gwen: Yes When he got the meningitis, of course I didn’t know what it

was It was a Sabbath I went to church, and he had this fever I could

Racism as a Cause of Death 11

do nothing about this fever We were down in [name of town] That’s where our church was So there was a little white hospitalthere, and I took him there, and they wouldn’t even do anything Andthey would not really treat him They didn’t know what it was Theydidn’t have facilities to deal with him They did not give him any-thing And I don’t know what the delay might have done I do feel thatthe delay probably was detrimental, but that was because we were black

Toni: When my grandfather had a stroke, he was taken to the poorest hospital

in [the city] where you basically go to die

Beverly: And he went there because?

Toni: Because that’s where the poor black people went unless you were

the elite of the elite And so that’s where they called with the ambulance,and later on what we found out, I want to thank you for this time, because

I had forgotten all this stuff Where he was doing the plumbing [when

he had his stroke] was in a very poor, poor area, and the ambulancewouldn’t come and get him They had to call a cab to take him to thehospital, and they had insurance And the doctors, my grandmother didhave a white doctor friend (she was working in a nursing home), thatexamined my grandfather, and they said if they would have gotten him

to a better hospital in a better time that they would have been able tostart treatment earlier Now it may still have resulted in the same result,but then the other piece was they stopped giving him physical therapy

Beverly: Because?

Toni: Poor “Oh your insurance doesn’t cover it.” That may very well, may

have [been so], but who was there to advocate for [it]?

Another version of medical racism that people talked about was the ing out of a high- risk procedure on someone who was African American,without adequately informing the family members, who consented to theprocedure, of the risks

carry-Beverly: Do you think that racism or discrimination was connected to your

mom’s death

Calvin: (takes deep breath) Could very well be If [my father, who gave consent

for the procedure] had been an older white man, maybe they would nothave been so quick to do [a high-risk procedure] Maybe they wouldhave waited a little while That’s possible That’s very possible

Freeman and Payne (2000) and Barrett (2003) summarized a medical ature showing that African Americans are less likely than whites with early-stage lung, colon, or breast cancer to receive potentially curative surgery,and also showing that African Americans with chronic kidney failure or the

liter-12 African American Grief

potential for coronary artery disease are less likely than whites to receiveappropriate medical referral or diagnostic procedures Perhaps the definitiveanalysis of the medical racism is from the Institute of Medicine of the Na-tional Academy of Sciences (Smedley et al, 2003) It reviews an enormousnumber of studies showing that whites on the average receive better medicalcare for a wide range of health problems—coronary vascular problems, HIVinfections, diabetes, end-stage renal disease, pediatric care, mental healthcare, rehabilitative services, and so on There are a few areas where AfricanAmericans are more likely to receive certain medical procedures, but arguablyreceiving these procedures is a symptom of failure of more desirable treat-ments (e.g., amputation; Smedly et al., 2003, p 6) So it is not surprising thatone version of medical racism that interviewees talked about was that a familymember was given minimal or token care, rather than extensive and carefulexamination and state-of-the-art treatment

Beverly: Do you think that racism or discrimination was connected in any

way to your mother’s death?

Clyde: Had she been European I think there were other tests and other

things that I’m sure could have happened I just believe that I meanfrom just the way that she was uh, I could see how the doctor was, andthe doctor would come in and see her, and how he reacted to her Noone touched her He never touched her, touched her that much that Icould see I always wondered I always felt, “Wow,” you know, but what

he didn’t know was I knew about bedside manner and I would justlook at this person and think for some reason my folks, they don’t believethat a doctor could be a racist bigot They just don’t see a doctor as aracist [But] he’s a person first and a doctor second, so he can be a racist,and he can withhold certain services or medications If he don’t give

it to you, you won’t know anything about it And the encounters I hadwith them was always he just felt that I was one of them that wentnorth, and just was a smart ass

Beverly: So he gave you a hard time.

Clyde: Probably the other way around He always felt that I was hostile

Prob-ably was But I just felt that uh, ‘cause it didn’t mean anything to him.She was just another person that he was gonna see He was going throughhis motions I just felt that they look at African- American lives differ-ently That’s all That’s what I felt And I’m gonna go with my gut feeling

I won’t change it

Beverly: Do you think racism or discrimination was connected to your

grandmother’s death?

Toni: Umhm, oh yes I do, because one, even in terms of the quality of care

that they got, even though this was still in California, California is still

Racism as a Cause of Death 13

one of the most racist places It’s just the southern west That’s it And

so I’m sure that there’s care she did not receive And the other piece of itwas that a couple of the nurses aides told my mom, “You need to suethem You need to sue .” My mother wouldn’t do it She wouldn’t do

it, ‘cause she is still afraid of bucking Mr Charlie And if she sued them,then she wouldn’t fit in

Beverly: Do you think racism or discrimination was connected at all with

[your mother’s] death?

Cynthia: My family, they did mention some concerns, and they felt that

she was not as attended to as well as what she could have been And myfather was concerned about some issues, but he never was that specific.Medical racism might mean that a person was limited to being seen byphysicians who did not have the resources that might be available to physi-cians a white patient might see Toni talked about the care her grandmotherreceived

Toni: They went to a black doctor, but his office was no larger than this room,

and he didn’t have the up-to-date equipment

Beyond the roughly 40% of deaths where it was clear to interviewees thatmedical racism had a part in the death, there were a few deaths where therewas suspicion of medical racism but the interviewee and other family mem-bers chose not to investigate whether it had occurred They chose not to fightthat battle for themselves or for the family member who might not havereceived the treatment a white patient would have received Patricia talkedabout family suspicions that racism was involved in the treatment and death

of her mother, who had died seven years prior to the interview But Patriciaand her family chose not to explore the matter

Patricia: I think the fact that when it really started we didn’t know You

could’ve attributed a lot of things in terms of how well were we reallyviewed and screened when we went in for checkups and so forth Younever know whether things were taken lightly or overlooked or not taken

as seriously because of our race So some of us wondered, there wassomething where we thought we might try to look into, the doctors andthe hospital and see if they had done this or checked this and checkedthat My mom would be the type where she would not want to makemore of a scene about things It wasn’t that she didn’t feel like she couldstand up for her rights, because she would So there would be somethings she would think let God handle whatever But there’s noth-ing that we would be able to really document per se Unun We justmake certain assumptions about it So healthwise, we would con-sider that resolved, because there’s some things you can carry so long